With the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice tournament around the corner, Riot Games has revealed more information about the next big international League of Legends event after that: the Mid-Season Invitational.
Taking the place of last year’s All-Star Invitational, this year’s mid-season event will feature pit the top team from each of six regions around the world against each other. The champions of the NA and EU LCS, LCK, LPL, and LMS will join the winner of a wild-card tournament held in Turkey in April.
The Mid-Season event, running May 7-10, will take place in Tallahassee Florida at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center, which seats about 12,000 people, at Florida State University.
The event itself will open with a round-robin group stage, with the top four teams surviving the best-of-one group stage advancing to a semifinal. The two semifinals and tournament finals will feature best-of-five series.
“We’re excited to bring high-level live competitive play (and hopefully some epic matchups!) to East Coast fans, as well as to audiences worldwide,” Dustin Beck writes in the announcement.
Granted it seems a little odd to call a landlocked city in the Florida panhandle a “coast,” but the Eastern location is a welcome change over another event in California.
One thing that does have some fans riled up is the format, especially after IEM revealed it’d open with a best-of-one group stage. Fans want to see teams get more chances to play best-of series, where teams can make adjustments against a specific foe in between games. While four teams at the Mid-Season tournament will have that chance, two will be eliminated without it.
Even so, the Mid-Season Invitational is certainly a welcome part of the League of Legends offseason. Tickets for the Tallahassee showdown will be available at a later date.
Photo via Riot Games/Flickr
